The California Thrasher {Toxostoma Rediviva) 



By F. E. L. Beal 



Thrashers are eminently birds of the underbrush. While they occasionally 

 alight on trees at some height from the ground, they are more frequently seen 

 under bushes or skulking out of sight in some almost impenetrable thicket of briars. 

 When, however, the thrasher wakes in the morning and feels his soul overflowing 

 with song, he perches on the topmost twig of a tree and lets the world know that 

 he is there and believes that life is worth living. 



The food of the thrasher is obtained on or near the ground. The long curved 

 bill of the California species is probably used much as many birds use their claws 

 to dig among dead leaves and other rubbish for insects. The bird is not fastidious 

 in its diet, and examination of the stomachs reveals a good many bits of dead 

 leaves, rotten wood, plant stems, which are carelessly taken along with more nutri- 

 tious morsels. 



An examination of 82 stomachs of this species shows that vegetable food 

 exceeds the animal in the proportion of 59 to 41. In the eastern species {T. rufwn) 

 the ratio is 36 to 64. This result is rather surprising, for, as a general rule, Cali- 

 fornia birds eat a larger proportion of animal food than do the most nearly 

 related eastern species. 



Animal food. — As the thrasher is eminently a ground forager it would 

 naturally be expected to find and eat many ground-living beetles. Of these the 

 Carabidse are the most important, owing to their predaceous habits ; so a separate 

 account of this family was kept. The result shows that they enter the food of 

 the thrasher to the extent only of 3.8 per cent, while all other beetles amount to 

 nearly 6 per cent. Of these, the darkling beetles (Tenebrionidae) are the most 

 mimerous, and the May beetle (Scarabaeidae) next. But very few weevils or other 

 species that live on trees or foliage were found. Of all the insects, Hymenopetera 

 are the most abiindant, as they are also the most constant element of the thrasher's 

 food. About half of these are ants, the rest wasps and bees. Ants naturally are 

 the insects most often found by this bird, as many species live on the ground and 

 among rubbish and rotten wood. The occurrence in the food of wasps and bees, 

 on the contrary, is somewhat of a surprise, as they are mostly sun-loving insects 

 more often found on flowers or the leaves of trees than under bushes or thickets 

 where the thrasher delights to forage. Together they make up something more 

 than 12 per cent of the food of the year. Two specimens of worker honey-bees 

 (Apis mellifera) were found in one stomacli. None of the other Hymenopetera 

 was of specially useful species. 



Caterpillars, cocoons, and moths amount to a little more than 8 per cent of the 

 food, and the greater number were eaten during the winter months. It is probable 

 that they were hibernating and were raked out from under dead leaves or other 

 rubbish. A few bugs, flies, grasshoppers, and spiders make up the rest of the 

 animal food — about 6 per cent. Spiders and myriapods amount to a little more 

 than 6 per cent. 



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